A mountain climber had to be rescued from Mt. Fuji twice in the space of a week after he returned to the same spot days later to retrieve his lost phone. The 27-year-old mountaineer, a Chinese college student living in Japan, first made the ascent on Tuesday but had to be rescued from the 12,000-foot peak after losing his crampons—a spiked device attached to the bottom of climbing shoes which allows for better traction. But on Friday, just days after being airlifted from the summit, the hapless climber returned to Mt. Fuji in a vain attempt to recover a backpack containing some of his lost belongings, including his phone—and had to be rescued again. After scaling 9,842 feet, the climber developed altitude sickness, and was once again airlifted back to safety. It is unknown whether he recovered his lost phone. Due to harsh weather conditions, people are discouraged from scaling Mt. Fuji outside of the official climbing season, which runs from July to September. It now costs 4,000 yen ($28) to scale the mountain after a tourist tax was implemented in 2024, and the mountain is limited to 4,000 visitors a day.
